Certain passages in Prof. Flinders Petrie's History of Egypt afford a curious insight into the prerogatives of Egyptian queens as far back as about B.C. 2684. The consort of Usertesen II, the fourth king of the twelfth dynasty was named Nefert,of whom a grey granite statue is preserved at the Ghizeh Museum and represents her as seated on a throne. On this are the titles “The hereditary princess, the great favorite, the greatly praised, the beloved consort of the king, the ruler of all women, the king's daughter of his body, Nefert.” Prof. Flinders Petrie adds: “The title ruler or princess of all women is peculiar, and suggests that the queen had some prerogatives of government as regards the female half of the population.” The title in question reappears four centuries later in connection with Nubkhas, the queen of Sebek=Emsaup, of the 13th dynasty and her stele in the Louvre entitles her the “great heiress, the greatly favored, the ruler of all women, the great royal wife, united to the crown Nub-kha-s” (op. cit., vol. i, pp. 175 and 225).
Between B.C. 1423-1414 queen Mutemua-arat appears as “the goddess queen” and “great royal wife” (Flinders Petrie op. cit., ii, p. 174). The consort of Amenhotep III (B.C. 1414-1379) the celebrated Tyi, the daughter of Yuaa and Thuaa, is entitled “princess of both lands,” and “chief heiress, princess of all lands.” Her successor Nefertiti is called “princess of south and north, lady of both lands,” which titles, as Prof. Flinders Petrie comments, “like the titles of Tyi, imply a hereditary right to [pg 428] rule Egypt.” They undoubtedly place her on a footing of equality with the king, which is, however, comprehensible when it is explained that she was the ruler of all women, while he was the ruler of all men. The position of the Egyptian queen would thus prove to have been analogous to that of the ancient Mexican Quilaztli (see pp. [61-67]).
The analogy is all the more striking when it is realized that the titles of the Mexican chieftainess were: “the Woman warrior, the Woman of the Underworld or Below, the Woman serpent or female twin and the Eagle woman,” while the emblem of the Egyptian goddess-queen of the south was the vulture and she was the personification of Isis, represented under the form of a serpent, the twin of the male serpent, Osiris.
Figure 71.
Much food for thought is furnished by a Syrian relief sculpture from Amrit (published by Spamer, see fig. [71], 2), which exhibits a vulture or eagle with outstretched wings, in juxtaposition to a winged disk which appears to combine features of the Assyrian winged disk (the bird's tail and two appendages, see fig. [71],1) with the two uræi of the Egyptian form (fig. [71], 3). It is striking how clear the symbolism of the latter becomes when interpreted (1) as the symbol of the hidden god and his male and female form, Osiris and Isis, accompanied by the wings symbolizing air and the [pg 429] idea that the deity was invisible and immaterial; (2) as the symbol of Egypt itself—an entity, a complete circle, divided into two parts, under two rulers. The pair of antelope horns above emphasize the fact that the twain were as a single pair. The combined crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, the latter exhibiting a serpent's head and the first, what appears to be its tail, constitute the symbol of joint rulership which, in this case, is accompanied by the feather, the rebus expressing the words “truth and justice.”
While the Syrian bas-relief conveys the idea of two separate kingdoms, one conveying the idea of single rulership, by the form of an eagle; the other of dual rulership, by the two uræi, each of which is crowned by a small disk; the Egyptian symbol distinctly conveys the idea of a close union of two distinct parts. The historical fact that Menes succeeded in uniting both lands under a single crown, indicates clearly enough that the ancient empire had become disintegrated and that by marrying the female ruler of the south he had reinstated the dual government on its original primitive basis. That, during the period of separation and independence, a powerful gynocracy had been formed seems more than probable. Just as evidences are met with in ancient Mexico of the existence of female communities, so the Old World furnishes accounts, deemed fabulous, of powerful gynocracies. Thus we have heard of the Amazons, the fabulous race of women warriors who are supposed to have founded a powerful empire on the coast of the Euxine.
A searching analysis of the texts translated by Brugsch, relating to the ceremonies performed at the New Year and famous Sed festivals, as well as historical facts gleaned from the works of living authorities, throw a light upon the position and sacred duties of the Egyptian queens during many centuries. The critical examination of a number of inscriptions, translated by Brugsch, is found to show that the queen was the high priestess and living image of Hathor-Isis and the personification of the female principle of nature, associated in Egypt with the nocturnal Heaven and the Above, and their symbols, the bird or vulture, the cow, the female serpent, the moon, the stars, and in particular Sirius-Sothis. In remotest historical times the goddess-queen seems to have resided in her own capital, a fortress. The universal necessity to insure the safety of women and children in times of warfare may well have originally led to the assignment of a separate, permanent [pg 430] place of residence, to the female portion of the population. The New Year festival, which coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius (20th July, Jul. Cal.) and the overflow of the Nile, which suspended outdoor activity, was generally celebrated throughout the land as the “union of heaven and earth,” or the conjunction of “the sun and the moon, or Sirius.”
It was customary that, at this period, the queen, personifying the Sothis star, should come forth from her retirement and, surrounded by pomp and majesty, meet the king in solemn state, publicly occupy her place on the double throne, and share in the performance of sacred religious rites. It is easy to see that the idea underlying the entire ceremonial was the harmonizing of the actions of the sacred personifications of the dual principles of nature with the natural phenomena, from which arose a strange confusion of ideas concerning the relationship between these consecrated individuals and the powers of nature, which culminated in the artificial belief that they were divinely appointed mediators between humanity and the supreme power.